Personal Reflections

I don’t remember the first time I found a boy attractive. I do know that in my earliest memories, when I was 4 or 5, this attraction felt natural and innate. I know, too, that there was a first time I found a girl [...]

My sister put on the hijab when she was 20 years old. I remember the color of her first scarf—a pale blue green, maybe chiffon, crinkling at the corners of her smiling eyes, enveloping the circumference of her perfect moon shaped face. My sister was one [...]

“Why are you so angry?” my mother asked me during her recent visit to Brooklyn. It’s the first time my mother has ever asked me that question, and I know that she is lovingly unaware of its ramifications as a nocuous cliche, despite its power as [...]

In June, Rachel Dolezal, an activist and former president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, was outed by her parents as being a white woman. She later left the organization. And just yesterday, Shaun King, an activist affiliated with the Black [...]

Over the past 72 hours I have been attacked with lies by the conservative media, lies that have been picked up by the traditional media and spread further. I have kept silent at the advice of friends and mentors, but I will do so no longer. [...]

I am Darren Wilson. Which is to say I am guilty in the slaying of Michael Brown. Think of me as the guy who drives the getaway car - who provides the means of escape. Or think of me as the guy who, with malice [...]

I’ve been told that I’m the ‘good’ kind of Latino because of my skin color What exactly does being a light-skinned Latina mean for me? It means that all at once, I am just dark enough, too dark or not dark enough at all. It [...]

No one likes to talk about the fact that “doing time” leaves the majority of returning citizens worse off than before they were incarcerated. Prior to my imprisonment, I had a very successful consulting business and I lived a solidly middle-class life. I worked hard, I [...]

*This piece has been published with permission of the referenced ex-partner. Other relationships may have been slightly altered to protect specific identities.* The first time I was sexually assaulted I must have been 9 or 10 years old. I was violated by two family [...]